Whenever the idea of a planned presentation comes up, usually the first thing sales people think about is a “canned script.” In a canned script, I am referring to the old-fashioned, smile-and-dial era, word-for-word, rehearsed, “Pitch.” Such was a primary tool of sales people, in particular telemarketers, years ago. Alternatively, we had the opposite of the canned spiel with the show up and throw up method, where sales people just walked in and did whatever they thought came natural.

While most sales professionals have rose above the smile and dial pitch, the question arises of the validity of using a planned sales presentation today. While not exactly a throw-up tactic, many still believe it is best to know all you can know about your product and prospect, and then just go in and let the sales interaction flow impromptu, directed by the prospect’s interests. So, dealing with today’s modern and educated buyer, should you play-it-by-ear and wing it, or use a planned and structured sales interaction?

Defining a Planned Sales Interaction
I believe that for the majority of selling situations, you should use a well-planned and structured sales presentation; but allow me to define exactly what I mean.

Although with a planned presentation, you may have a few words or phrases that you might use verbatim, I am not talking about a canned script. By a planned presentation, I am referring to “a thoroughly interactive, yet totally controlled methodical process that systemically moves the sale through incremental, yet critical stages, accomplishing interim goals at each step, while maximizing the odds of closing the sale.”

You can keep your sales interaction feeling impromptu, but you must have a way to control the direction and outcomes. You should have a step-by-step process that leads to a successful conclusion. In such, you can maintain the flexibility to adapt to responses, yet keep the process on track towards a narrow objective.

A Strategy
A Planned sales interaction is a strategy. With a planned interaction, you want to know what you need to accomplish at each stage of the presentation. For instance, in your first step, you may want to design proper seating arrangements as soon as you arrive. Or you may want to find out more about the prospect’s delivery systems during your warm-up talk. Perhaps you need to uncover more about the current contract the prospect has with a competitor.

In your second stage, perhaps you need to uncover exactly how much the prospect is spending on the outdated system, how much time their people are wasting due to lack of training. It is a plan on what you need to accomplish and when.

Planned VS Canned
So what is the difference between a planned sales interaction and a canned pitch?

A Canned Script – PUSHES: Pushes benefits, forces ideas, and minimises interaction.
A Planned Structure – Pulls: Pulls out problems, uncovers pain and maximises interaction.

A Canned Script – SUPPRESSES: Suppresses responses and objections and stifles emotion.
A Planned Structure – EXTRACTS: Extracts responses and objections early or avoids them and stimulates emotion.

A Canned Script – TELLS: Tells the prospect things.
A Planned Structure – ASKS: Asks the prospect questions.

In dealing with today’s sophisticated and educated buyer, now more than ever, you need to have a well-thought-out plan. You must have a strategy to accomplish every sales goal, including just setting an appointment.

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
MTD Sales Training

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It’s that time of the year again when everyone is second guessing what’s going to happen in 2012 so I thought I’d put together my top 10 predictions for the sales industry.

1. Recession Or Not, It’s Going To Be Like This For A Long Time
Whether you think we’re coming out of the recession or not, business has changed for a long time to come. You’ve got to accept that no-one is going to wave a magic wand and open the flood gates of spending again so if you’re waiting for that moment then you’ll be waiting for a long time! Instead, accept that these current conditions are going to be like this for some time to come and just “get on with it”

2. Sales Professionals Will Finally Get Around To Using Social Media
Sales 2.0, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – these are all sites, terms and services that Sales Pros have had on their “to do” list for some time. So you’ve got your LinkedIn profile…well, now’s the time to start using it! 2012 will the be the year where the adoption of these sites gathers momentum and this will snowball as more and more success stories are made “public” and the return on investment finally filters through.

3. “Entrepreneurial Salesmanship”
The modern day sales professional will need to think more like an entrepreneur and opportunity seeker more than ever before. They will need to look at different and new avenues of generating business and fresh and innovative methods of keeping their existing ones. Sales recruitment will look at potential candidates who also possess innovative, entrepreneurial and creative traits in addition to the tried and tested sales recruitment assessments criteria.

4. A Shift Towards Unbiased Benefit Selling
The term what’s in it for me (WIIFM) has been around since the beginning of time. The problem with this is that today’s modern buyers know that this is a biased point of view! WIIFM will be superseded in 2012 with PISB (Prove I should buy) Demonstrating and explaining “The What” is not enough. Instead there will be a shift away from “you” telling the whole story, features, benefits etc and instead a move towards a joint effort which will include input from your customers via video, audio and written testimonials, interviews, unbiased social media feedback and showcasing your products and services in action via live customers using your products and the like.

5. Negotiation Skills Become Vital
The modern day sales professional will need to add negotiation skills to their armoury if their margins are going to be protected in 2012. Negotiation skills is normally a section tagged on to the last part of a sales training course or as part of the closing/objection handling section but it’s a vital skill that if often overlooked. Your buyers are going to demand more and more and will want to pay less and less so those that are best equipped to deal with the price bashing barrage that is to come will win the day over the competition.

6. Marketing & Sales Alignment For Early Engagement
“The leads are weak” say the Sales team. “They can’t close anything” say the Marketing team! More so than ever before, the sales and marketing functions are going to have work very closely together to engage with your buyers much earlier on in the sales process. Reports and research illustrate that between 25%-40% of the buying process is completed online before they engage with your sales team. Those companies that can “catch” their prospects while they are conducting their research online, on blogs, forums, groups and the like with have a distinct advantage over the competition. This will need an aggregated approach via both marketing and sales to create the “bait” and “thought leadership content” all over the internet to attract interest and then to create effective lead capture, follow up and engagement systems.

What are your predictions? Have your say below and write a comment!

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

You have finally closed that big one!  You have been working on that sale for a long time and no one believed that you could close it, but you did.  However, now you look up and see your pipeline is empty.   You are short on leads, prospects, appointments, everything.   When your pipeline runs dry, it’s like being stranded on the beach and up to your ankles in troubled waters. 

Consistent Sales Activity and Work Ethic
Of course, if you constantly maintained an even work ethic and always completed the same amount of calls, contacts and other sales activities, you would never have the dry pipeline problem.  If you follow your Science of Selling, then you understand the importance of keeping your numbers steady, regardless of the results.   However, in case you missed that lesson, here is another way to keep an eye on your treasure trove.

Replace Everything That You Use
Simply replace every sales item that you use; put it back.  By sales items, I am referring to sales calls, contacts, appointments, sales, etc.  For instance, you pick up the telephone and call a cold lead from your database, and make contact with that lead.  Now you have one additional “contact with a decision maker (DM)” in your database.   However, you also have one less cold lead.  Replace that lead as soon as possible.

Once you set an appointment with that contact, you now have an additional “appointment set” in your funnel, but you also have one less DM for which you have not set an appointment.  When you meet with that DM and do a sales interaction and make a proposal, you now are left with one less “appointment”.  If you close the sale, then your number of “active proposals” just went down.  Just replace everything.

The Averages
Keep your averages in mind as well.  For instance, say you have a 25% closing average, in that it takes you four presentations to close one sale.  Then when you close one sale, you are now short four presentations.  Replace those immediately. 

Get your pipeline full and then replace what you use.

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
Bestselling Author, Sales Authority & Speaker On Modern Day Selling Methods 

MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

The sales interaction went well.  The prospect seems very interested, and you cannot see any objections.  However, you also cannot see any urgency, as the prospect feels they can wait.  You offer a price discount as an inducement, but still the prospect sees no reason to buy TODAY.  Below is a powerful and effective way to create a sense of urgency in your sales interactions. 

The Value of the Problem x Time = Urgency
One of the most effective ways to create a sense of urgency in the mind of the prospect is to help the prospect understand that the value and cost of their problem increases exponentially with time. 

First, you should be using a professional sales interaction that uncovers problems and exposes pain.  Then, as you uncover the prospect’s problems and pain, you need link them to the negative effects of time.

As an example, let’s imagine one of the benefits your product offers is that it helps clients save money on their heating costs.  As an educated professional, you know not to just push the benefits in a “show up and throw up” way; and instead, you turn it around to uncover the problems and pain first and then move on to solve the problems and pain with your solution.

If they will save money with your product, then they are losing money without it.  Due to the size of the plant and other factors, you calculate their losses to be approximately £40,000 a year.  During the sales interaction, you need to help the prospect visualise and relate the loss in terms of real money and daily costs. 

To tell the prospect that they can save £40,000 a year is one thing.  However, to help the prospect understand that they are spending; throwing away, right now, £166 every single day that they are open…is quite another. 

If your product costs £1,500, the prospect is going to spend more than the cost of your solution in less than ten days!

Link the cost and value of the problem to time, and help the prospect see that time truly is money.

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
Bestselling Author, Sales Authority & Speaker On Modern Day Selling Methods 

MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

One of my trainers was taking a telephone sales course the other week for a company, and a delegate said she was targetted with making at least 100 cold-calls a day. When the trainer asked what critera the call list was governed by, she said it was simply a bought list from another company, listing details of companies in the area, with no indication of their industry or willingness to buy their products and services.

This company obviously assumed that everybody is a potential customer for their services, with no thought to how these businesses will utilise or even express an interest in the services.

It’s a dangerous, over-optimistic approach to assume everyone has a need for what you sell. Once you start thinking that everyone is a customer, you spend valuable resources pursuing opportunities that aren’t real. This plays itself out most commonly during the prospecting stage, where cold calling is seen as a way to fill the pipeline, rather than as a process of eliminating leads that aren’t likely to convert.

You end up with a sales team chasing deals that simply don’t materialise. Can you imagine the morale and motivation within that company? They simply go through the motions, hoping against hope that someone,womewhere, will offer them a lifeline and say ‘yes’ to an appointment. Fire enough buckshot and some is bound to hit, they think.

This process will only succeed in showing potential customer how desperate you are. If you make cold calls, make sure the homework has been done first on the potential client. Be aware of what their specific requirements would be before any contact is made. That way, you create potential customers rather than shooting blind to see if any exist.

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

When you meet a prospect, how much information do you usually get from them? Naturally, their name, phone and email adrress is top of your list. But what other information can you ask for that would make your job easier? How much could you know that will help you identify the best way to network with this prospect? Here are some ideas of the most essential, minimum amount of information you need to make your contact really valuable…

Their name and title
Full company name and address
Phone (direct line, if possible)
Mobile
Email address
Website

Now, what other information would be useful for you to get that would help you beat the competition in getting to the prospect’s real needs?

Here’s some ideas:

What the company does that’s better than their competition
What decision-making authority the person has
What challenges the person is facing
What challenges the company is facing
What strategies you could use to get into the company
How you can keep in contact with the prospect and how often
What their Linked-In, Facebook and Google pages tell you
What actions you can take, and information you could send, that will make the prospect sit up and take notice of you

When you consider all the information you could gain from a prospect, many times we only scratch the surface. If the prospect feels they would benefit from your services, they would be happy to give you all that information and more. Build the relationship on a personal level and you’ll reap the rewards.

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

Commercials are the lifeblood for any company. A commercial can be anything that advertises its benefits to the final customer, and can come in many formats. How you feel about them will determine how successful that commercial campaign is.

You should think of yourself and your own personal commercial to your prospects. You do have one (or more) don’t you?

A commercial is your way of saying to a prospect what you and your company can do to make their lives easier, more productive, more profitable, quicker to market, or whatever you actively do.

But its not simply a resume of what you sell or how you service clients. It must be impactful and make the customer feel they must go deeper than just surface knowledge about you and the company.

Remember, there is no reason to tell a prospect how you can help him until you have diagnosed what the problem might be. You do this by asking quality questions, some of which make the prospect think long and hard before answering.

Identify these questions by asking yourself: “What information can I get by asking this question? How can I find out deeper information about their needs? What questions can I ask that my competitors never would?”

After this, you can make quality statements that make the client sit up and take notice. When that’s complete, you can identify a closing statement that will grab them and make them take action.

That’s what a TV or radio commercial does, and you owe it to yourself to do it to.

So, here’s an example of a personal commercial:

1) You state your name, clearly and confidently (Hi, I’m Sean McPheat…)

2) You state your company, clearly and proudly (I’m with MTD Sales Training…)

3) You tell them what you do (We impact businesses like yours who know that their sales teams should be tapping into more potential within companies than they are at the moment)

4) Ask your quality questions (How do you currently measure the success of your sales teams, other than the profit they bring in? If you lost one of your major clients, how would that impact you? What do you plan to do to keep them loyal to you? How are you keeping ahead of the competition, and how do you know more about them than they know about you?)

5) Make your quality statement. (I’m sure we can help you. MTD offer several ways to improve your sales results in real time activities, and our programmes create many possibilities that can be used immediately in the field)

6) Get them to take action now. (When would you like to schedule a meeting to discuss how your teams can tap into the potential we discussed, or would you prefer to have dinner to go over some of the ideas I already have?)

You create a commercial that is specific for every customer’s situation and you offer more value by helping them see why they should buy the appointment, or whatever the next stage is for you.

This way, the customer sees that buying your offer makes him look and feel good, which naturally will highlight how successful your personal commercial can be.

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

Have you ever been caught out on the hop?

Have you ever gone into a situation where you just knew that you should have had more facts, figures and information?

Have you ever come out of a situation saying, “I wish I knew then what I know now”?

Has an interviewer ever caught you out on a question about your product or something that you didn’t have a clue about?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, it was probably down to lack of preparation.

What is preparation after all?

Well, without stating the obvious, it’s all about going into a situation fully prepared and informed.

It’s all about being confident in your subject matter, being prepared mentally and being ready.
This is all common sense and I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know.
But why don’t you prepare more then!

Just picture a General preparing for a war!

What do you think his chances would be if he didn’t have any of the following?

* If he didn’t know the opposition
* If he didn’t know what weapons the opposition were using
* If he didn’t know what type of terrain and locations they would be fighting in
* How many of them are there?
* What are the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses?
* If he didn’t have a plan of attack himself?
* If he had no maps

Do you reckon the General would be confident going into battle not knowing that information?

The same goes for you in any situation that you may face.

You’ve got to ask yourself the following question:

“Am I fully prepared to face anything that this situation could throw at me?”

If the answer is no, you have not prepared enough.

* Do you know what you are talking about?
* Do you know the other person?
* Do you know what you are doing?
* Do you know all the information that you will be talking about?

In closing, just think about the following situations and next time that you face them, ask yourself “Are you fully prepared?”

* A sales interview
* When you meet someone for the first time/ Building rapport and starting conversations
* When attending a meeting
* When meeting your bosses boss

Be prepared and you’ll be preparing to win!

Happy Selling

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

Any customer who buys from you should have the opportunity to purchase your product or service again.

In the real world, this doesn’t always happen. here are some reasons why customers may not carry out repeat business with you and become your loyal customer:

1. Showing no genuine or personal interest. This is the biggest reason why customers leave…apathy by the service provider. You may think you are looking after them, but are you? Really?

2. Poor or slow response to enquiries. Slow service means you simply don’t care. Even if you’re the best quality, people will leave for quicker responses.

3. Product or service unavailability. If they can’t get what they want, when they want it, they’ll go somewhere else.

4. Difficult ordering systems. By making the ordering system hard to decipher, or creating obstacles to the purchase procedure, you are saying you are more important than the customer. Make it easy to do business with you.

5. Impersonal service. Invest in training and coaching your front line people. They create the first, and last, impression of your company.

6. Too many problems in dealing with you. Customers will forgive once. They’ll be annoyed with twice. Three times? Forget it.

7. Too much pressure to buy more. People do not want to be sold to; they want to buy. Become an adviser to them and they are more likely to listen to you. Pressure them and they are more likely to walk away.

8. Poor quality. You think your customer is always looking for cheap? How long will they put up with the lousy quality just to save a few pence?

9. Poor delivery of product or service. We used a company for office products once. Yes…just once. The attitude of the delivery people was awful. We now equate that company with the same attitude as the delivery and set-up people. Never again.

10. Being made to feel unimportant. Just like no.1, if I feel you don’t care about me, I will leave. All customers should feel that doing business with you is a pleasure. Is it with your company.

Your attitude and services will dictate whether you will get repeat business or not. They will either re-sign with you or resign from you. The choice is up to you.

Happy selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

I’ve been thinking about the skills that we salespeople need to gain more business, no matter what the economy is like. So, as we start another new year, it’s good to review the best ways to use our time and improve our abilities. Here are some ideas to start with:

QUALIFY QUICKLY: It’s impossible to sell to everyone you meet – not all will have the need or want for your products and services right now. Concentrate on those who are most likely to need your services and spend less time on those who don’t. Don’t let your pipeline get blocked with prospects who keep you waiting too long or cause more trouble than they are really worth. So ascertain a good list of criteria that your prospects have to meet in order to earn your valuable time dealing with them.

BECOME AN EXPERT PROBLEM-SOLVER: Get away from the idea that you are selling products or services – Go towards the fact that you are solving prospects’ problems. Many of our prospects will not be aware that they have problems until we show them how life for them could be like if they made the decision to go with us. And you can motivate your prospect to choose you over your competition when they discover that you can do it better than everyone else.

So work on what problems you solve, spend your time searching for companies who have those problems and you have more opportunities opening up than you did last year.

IMPROVE YOUR COMMUNICATION SKILLS: On our sales courses, we find many people who believe they are very good communicators. But they often fall short in many communication areas and this results in low or no sales.

Work on your rapport-building skills. Identify the ten best questions you can ask of your prospect. Improve your listening skills. Become more flexible in your communication style.

Adopt these skills and there’s a good chance you will improve your overall communication skills this year.

MAKE BETTER USE OF THE PHONE: You would cringe if you could hear some of the voice-mails we get left at our office by salespeople. At worst, they are dire and create a terrible impression for their company and services; at best, they are not well-prepared.

Have about 4 or 5 prepared scripts you can use if your decision-maker is unavailable at the moment. If you are asked by the assistant, “Do you want to leave a message?”, make sure you use those vital 15-20 seconds to leave something hat they will listen to all the way through, rather than cutting off and deleting as soon as they realise it’s a sales call.

Make your message focus on a prospect-specific reason why they should talk to you. Show you’ve done your homework on them.

MAKE YOUR PRESENTATIONS COME ALIVE: When you get to the point where you can present your solutions, remember that they have recognised they have a problem, so here’s your chance to impress.

Don’t talk about your product – talk about how their results will change as they reap the  benefits of your product.

Don’t talk about your services – talk about how their customers will react when they see the benefits of your prospect using your sevices.

Make the presentation come alive with stories, anecdotes, testimonials and results form customers who have used you before.

As we’ve said before, people buy because of emotional connection, and your product must not be seen as a commodity. Make your presentation make your product come alive.

BECOME THE KIND OF SALESPERSON YOU WOULD WANT TO BUY FROM: Eliminate any habits you may have built up that causes people to shy away from you. Commit to improving relationships rather than pushing products. Identify what skills your prospects are looking for from their partners and develop those. Become the kind of business partner your prospect will want to have in their business for the long haul.

These ideas should be integral to your success this year. There will be opportunities out there, no matter what the economy does. Plan effectively, get your fair share, and more, by adapting these ideas to your individual character, and watch your sales soar.

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The UK’s #1 Authority On Modern Day Selling
MTD Sales Training

Have you downloaded my latest report “The Sales Person’s Crisis”? Over 10,000 sales pros have.

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…